Discovering a love for painting at a young age is one of the things I'm most grateful for in my life. I started painting oil on canvas at the age of 9 and later explored stained glass, sculpture, and fashion design. Creative expression is integral to my identity and it's the reason why I looked for ways to apply my creativity to my second love - science. During my Bachelor's of Science degree, I picked up graphic design and got more seriously into writing. I considered medical illustration and science journalism as the next steps. After I graduated, I headed to Stanford to further advance my writing skills. A summer of writing courses at Stanford helped me decide to pursue a Master's in Journalism. Not surprisingly, I eventually found my way to brand design, product design, and video production.
My Expressionism and Abstract Paintings
About 4 years ago, I started to explore Expressionism and Abstract Painting. This year, I tried acrylic paints for the first time and fell in love with them.
My Impressionism Paintings
I painted these oil on canvas paintings between age 9 and 19. Some of them are "copies of a master" and some of them are originals.
My Story
Before I started painting, I had spent about two years visiting museums and galleries in Europe. They were my classrooms.
I was nine. Inspired by a story on TV of a girl who promised to become the next Picasso, my parents decided to equip me with easel, canvas, paints and brushes. They let me pick from a shoebox of postcards with paintings on them. Per my choices, it was clear that I liked the French Impressionists, in particular, Claude Monet. He became my mentor.
I don’t know when I transitioned from stick people abstractions to sophisticated drawings. My parents don’t seem to know either. I liked giving my drawings to my grandmother because I knew she would keep them and look at them. My elementary school art teacher described me as “one step ahead of everyone.” I had won some art competitions, including placing in the top five in my age group nationally. But those were the only signs of an artistic proclivity.
Before I started painting, I had spent about two years visiting museums and galleries in Europe. They were my classrooms. Map and pencil in hand to check off the rooms I had visited, I tested my family’s patience on our cultural expeditions. I looked at the paintings as if they were in my mind, the canvas blank, and I were trying to paint them—a technique I’d keep using for my own paintings. I squinted and tilted my head, scrutinizing their highlights and shadows. I nearly poked my nose into the canvases, stressing out the guards. They sighed as I moved back.
My father set up beside me—it was probably the first time he held brushes since elementary school—to ease me into my first painting, a winter landscape that I don’t have a record of. I learned to eye how much linseed oil to add to achieve the desired oil paint consistency. But I never had to learn how to mix the color I wanted or how to make the initial sketch or do the under-painting or plan out all the subsequent steps. My father soon left me to myself.
As my high school art teacher would later instruct, I saw the finished painting in my mind when I looked at a white canvas. There is nothing more to it. Focus and be patient to reach the aha moment you get when a finished painting looks back at you. Sometimes it takes just a few final brushstrokes to see the painting come alive.
To learn French Impressionism, I copied Monet’s The Walk (Argenteuil) (1875) and Poppies (1873), and then moved on to my own paintings—mostly landscapes and floral compositions. I’d absorb books of Impressionism, studying the photographs of paintings as if trying to remember enough details to paint them from memory. I first learned about the Golden Rule of Thirds and the Visual Path in high school, but found that I had already discovered them in my early paintings.
By the age of ten, less than a year after taking up painting, I had my first solo exhibition and sold paintings.
I don’t know when I transitioned from stick people abstractions to sophisticated drawings. My parents don’t seem to know either. I liked giving my drawings to my grandmother because I knew she would keep them and look at them. My elementary school art teacher described me as “one step ahead of everyone.” I had won some art competitions, including placing in the top five in my age group nationally. But those were the only signs of an artistic proclivity.
Before I started painting, I had spent about two years visiting museums and galleries in Europe. They were my classrooms. Map and pencil in hand to check off the rooms I had visited, I tested my family’s patience on our cultural expeditions. I looked at the paintings as if they were in my mind, the canvas blank, and I were trying to paint them—a technique I’d keep using for my own paintings. I squinted and tilted my head, scrutinizing their highlights and shadows. I nearly poked my nose into the canvases, stressing out the guards. They sighed as I moved back.
My father set up beside me—it was probably the first time he held brushes since elementary school—to ease me into my first painting, a winter landscape that I don’t have a record of. I learned to eye how much linseed oil to add to achieve the desired oil paint consistency. But I never had to learn how to mix the color I wanted or how to make the initial sketch or do the under-painting or plan out all the subsequent steps. My father soon left me to myself.
As my high school art teacher would later instruct, I saw the finished painting in my mind when I looked at a white canvas. There is nothing more to it. Focus and be patient to reach the aha moment you get when a finished painting looks back at you. Sometimes it takes just a few final brushstrokes to see the painting come alive.
To learn French Impressionism, I copied Monet’s The Walk (Argenteuil) (1875) and Poppies (1873), and then moved on to my own paintings—mostly landscapes and floral compositions. I’d absorb books of Impressionism, studying the photographs of paintings as if trying to remember enough details to paint them from memory. I first learned about the Golden Rule of Thirds and the Visual Path in high school, but found that I had already discovered them in my early paintings.
By the age of ten, less than a year after taking up painting, I had my first solo exhibition and sold paintings.